Massachusetts Recreational Marijuana Retail Delayed Again

Retail sales of cannabis will not begin in Massachusetts on July 1 as planned, it was announced this week. Steven Hoffman, chairman of the state’s Cannabis Control Commission (CCC), told local media that regulators have not yet licensed an independent testing laboratory for recreational marijuana. He said the CCC has not received any completed applications for a testing lab and so far only one applicant has begun the process.

“We do have one lab application that’s in the queue,” Hoffman said. “We’ve talked to the labs, the four operators of the medical marijuana labs, and our expectation, I don’t have timing, but our expectation is that they’ll all apply,” Hoffman told reporters Tuesday.

To help expedite the process, Commissioner Britte McBride said the CCC voted unanimously to permit staff to review out of order any completed applications for independent testing labs submitted by August 1, “purely for the purposes of being able to get the independent testing labs to the front of the queue so that we can start to establish a supply chain that is consistent with the statute.”

Regulators Now Reviewing Applications

The CCC began accepting applications for cannabis business licenses on June 1 and had hoped to authorize the